Union de Transports Aériens

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Union de Transports Aériens (UTA) was the largest wholly privately owned, independent[nb 1] airline in France. It was also the second-largest international, as well as the second principal intercontinental, French airline[nb 2] and a full member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) since its inception.

UTA also had two sister companies. These were UT Hotels (UTH)[11] and UTA Industrial Centre,[12] respectively. The former owned and operated 17 hotels at the destinations served by UTA's worldwide scheduled network.[2] The latter was the airline's maintenance arm. UTA Industrial Centre was located at its sister airline's original Paris Le Bourget base,[12] where its headquarters remained when the airline shifted its operating and engineering base to Charles de Gaulle Airport.[6]

At the time of its inception, UTA employed 4,900 personnel (including 630 aircrew)[21] and inherited a fleet of 35 aircraft from its predecessors, comprising six jet aircraft and 29 piston engine airliners. These were progressively repainted in UTA's new livery, a combination of UAT's blue and TAI's green colour schemes. The inherited 118,000 mi (190,000 km) network spanned five continents.[1][21] Most of these were intercontinental, long-haul routes connecting France with West and Southern Africa. On 1 November 1963 UTA introduced DC-8 jets on its flights from Paris to Lagos, Accra, Monrovia and Freetown. UTA's creation coincided with a new French aviation policy that established exclusive spheres of influence for UTA and Air France. Air France withdrew from UTA's sphere of influence[1] but UTA continued serving the African routes it inherited from UAT in association with Air Afrique. This included UTA taking the place of UAT in the joint revenue sharing agreement with Air Afrique. In addition, UTA continued providing commercial and technical assistance to Air Afrique on the same terms as UAT.[22][23][24]

Through most of its existence UTA was one of only four wholly privately owned, independent airlines outside of the US with a major, long-haul scheduled presence.[nb 7] Unlike its British, Canadian and Hong Kong independent contemporaries, for most of its existence UTA did not have a network of short-/medium-haul scheduled routes nor did it compete on any of its scheduled routes with Air France, the primary French flag carrier at the time. This made it an almost exclusively long-haul, intercontinental scheduled airline.[1] It also made its scheduled route network complementary to Air France and Air Inter. (UTA and Air France used to co-ordinate their schedules at Los Angeles to enable passengers to connect between Air France's transatlantic and UTA's transpacific services.)

In 1986 the French government unexpectedly decided to relax its policy of neatly dividing traffic rights for scheduled air services between Air France, Air Inter and UTA, without any route overlaps between them. The regulatory framework governing France's air transport sector at the time had been put in place in 1963. It had prevented the country's three main scheduled airlines from operating outside their respective spheres of influence and competing with each other. The French government's decision to adopt a less rigid interpretation of its policy gradually reversed both of these rules. It therefore enabled UTA to launch scheduled services to new destinations within Air France's sphere of influence, in competition with that airline, for the first time. Paris — San Francisco became the first route UTA served in competition with Air France non-stop from Paris. (Air France responded by extending some of its non-stop Paris — Los Angeles services to Papeete, Tahiti, which competed with UTA on the Los Angeles — Papeete sector.) UTA's ability to secure traffic rights outside its traditional sphere of influence in competition with Air France was the result of a successful campaign it had mounted to lobby its government to enable it to grow faster, thereby becoming a more dynamic and more profitablebusiness. During that time, UTA also planned to launch a short-haul European feeder network,[14][15][26] which was to be operated by its Aéromaritime subsidiary. In the event, these plans were scuppered by a long-running, bitter industrial dispute between UTA's management and the unions representing the majority of pilots at Aéromaritime as well as at UTA itself. The dispute was about the introduction of new, lower pay scales at Aéromaritime to prepare it for the competition it was likely to face at the hands of Europe's new breed of much lower cost, aggressively expanding independent airlines, as exemplified by UK-based Air Europe at that time. It lasted for the better part of a year from the end of 1988 until October 1989 and resulted in the grounding of both Aéromaritime and UTA during that period. UTA's plans for a European feeder network[14][15][26] were also overtaken by its subsequent merger with Air France.[27][28][29][30]

In 1988 French Transport Minister Michel Delebarre partially reversed the French government's relaxed policy on allocating traffic rights to the country's three main contemporary scheduled airlines when he decided to deny UTA the right to fly non-stop from Paris to Newark in direct competition with Air France.[26][32] The aim was to protect Air France's position as the country's dominant scheduled carrier by making UTA a less attractive takeover target for its foreign rivals in the event of a merger. The French government feared that Air France's smaller size relative to British Airways, Lufthansa and the US giants as well as its fragmented long-haul network put it at a commercial disadvantage in a liberalised air transport market. Air France, Air Inter and UTA were therefore encouraged to co-operate rather than compete with each other.[30][33]

On 12 January 1990 UTA, along with Air Inter and Air France itself, became part of an enlarged Air France group, which in turn became a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupe Air France.[14][16][19] On 18 December 1992, UTA ceased to exist as a legal entity within Groupe Air France.[20][34]

Air France's acquisition of UTA and Air Inter was part of an early 1990s French government plan to create a unified national carrier with the economies of scale and global reach to counter threats resulting from the liberalisation of the air transport market in the European Union (EU).[35]

Throughout most of this time, UTA's "mainline" fleet strength stood at about ten to twelve aircraft only. The airline's small fleet size was conditioned by the nature of its operations, i.e. as a long-haul carrier serving most of its routes as multi-stop sectors at low frequencies of less than one flight per day.[1]

UTA placed its first-ever order for Airbus aircraft in 1987. The order was for six four-engined Airbus A340-300 long-haul widebodiedjets. It included an option on a further six aircraft.[32] The aircraft on firm order were to be delivered between 1992 and 1994, at a rate of two planes per year.[29][44] It was intended that the newly ordered A340s would replace the airline's ageing DC-10s as well as facilitate its future expansion into new long-haul markets from the early 1990s onwards.

In 1989, UTA also ordered Boeing's twin-engined 767 widebody on behalf of Aéromaritime. That order had a value of US$250mn. It was for three -300ER aircraft.[32][45] Air France's acquisition of UTA in 1990 resulted in it inheriting two of Aéromaritime's three 767-300ERs,[nb 12] thereby itself becoming a 767 operator by default.

On 12 July 1972, a scheduled UTA flight en route from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, to Paris was taken over by hijackers. There were two fatalities as a result of this incident.[51]

On 10 March 1984, a UTA DC-8-63PF (registration F-BOLL)[52] flying from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo to Paris CDG with an intermediate stop at N'Djamena in Chad was destroyed, following two consecutive bomb explosions on board the aircraft while it was on the ground at N'Djamena Airport. There were no fatalities since all passengers and crew managed to evacuate the aircraft before the second explosion in the central baggage compartment tore the aircraft apart.[53][54]

On 16 March 1985, a UTA Boeing 747-3B3 (registration F-GDUA)[56] was destroyed on the ground at Paris CDG when a fire was accidentally started while cleaning of the aircraft's cabin was in progress. (According to contemporary press reports, the fire was allegedly started by a cleaner who carelessly dropped a burning cigarette in one of the toilets.) The fire rapidly spread, engulfing the entire cabin in flames. This resulted in the aircraft's total destruction, which was subsequently written off. There were no injuries as a result of this incident.[43][57][58]

On 19 September 1989, UTA flight 772, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 (registration N54629)[59] operating the Brazzaville — N'Djamena — Paris CDG sector, was bombed 46 minutes after take-off from N'Djamena causing the aircraft to crash while flying over Niger. Investigations and court cases have implicated Libyan state actors in the bombing. All 156 passengers and 14 crew members on board perished.[54][60][61] For nearly 20 years, this incident marked the deadliest air disaster involving a French-operated airliner, in terms of loss of life. As of June 2009, it ranks as the second-deadliest (see Air France flight 447) (This incident was briefly noted in Neil Peart's book The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa as he was on this flight just months prior.)